I’m listening to Shane Barnard’s The Answer in full 5.1 surround sound. It’s playing from my iPod Shuffle.
“You mean from iTunes, right?”
No.
“Oh, so you’re playing it directly from the Shuffle in Windows or on your Mac.”
No.
“So what then?”
I opened gtkpod, selected all the songs, and added them to my amaroK playlist. And yes, I have full control of my Creative SB Audigy 2 sound card, including the rear, center, and subwoofer channels.
“How is that possible?”
The beauty and ease of Kubuntu Linux.
“How can I do that?”
See my howto on the Ubuntu Forums.